


pieces of cake

by hey_mickey



Series: Mickey's Umbrellas [9]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: APOCALYPSE CAKE, Apocalypse, Birthday, Cake, Gen, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 06:34:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20689073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hey_mickey/pseuds/hey_mickey
Summary: It’s Number Five’s Birthday and he decides to celebrate





	pieces of cake

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this cause its Aidan Gallagher’s birthday and I was feeling sad about Five (again)

He had a special box saved just for this day. It wasn’t anything big or anything, although a long time ago he would’ve thought that that’s what the word “special” meant.

It was simply a cardboard box filled with red powder. Delores has spotted it, when they were shifting through the remains of what was once a grocery store. He very vividly remembered that, what he didn’t remember was how he left that store after he spotted the corpse of a mother and a stroller. Five was pretty sure he threw up for several consecutive hours, while Delores murmured useless word of comfort in his ears. 

But onto the contents of the box that he’d revered for a long while, waiting for the day. 

He doesn’t know for sure what the exact date was, since he had jumped to a time where keeping the date was no longer important, since there was no one around to keep it. But he had been trying to maintain a sense of normalcy, at least at first, so he’d attempted to keep track of the date. He kept track of the days, but never the months. There’s no point to calculating all of that when he has so many other numbers flying around his head. 

And today was approximately his 16th birthday. October 1st. 

And he was going to make a cake.

Delores sighed from where she was perched on the bookshelf he’d picked out a while ago and asked him with a tinge of irritation, how the hell he was planning on making a cake without any dairy or eggs. 

He said that he’d figure it out. He was wrong.

Five had incorrectly assumed that simply because he had watched Mom bake a couple of times, he’d be an expert at cooking. Once he was in the apocalypse, he had slowly learned all the different ways to cook anything he could, from spam in cans in burning grocery stores all the way to the cockroaches scattered around the floor, crawling through the corpses. Delores watched him with apprehension, laughing slightly every time he made an error. 

He found himself grinning along, even chuckling slightly at each mistake he made and every snide comment slid his way. Five had no measuring instruments, no way to mix things and no pan to put the cake in. Instead he got down and dirty, using his hands and several paper bowls. It’s not like he could get anyone else but himself, and possibly Delores sick. 

That’s a problem for tomorrow’s Five though. Just like the hangover he can already feel, pounding his way up his skull. 

Oh yea, he might be slightly tipsy. 

Delores hated it when he drank, especially since he was technically underage. When she brought this up to him, his only reply had been “and who’s going to enforce that? The cops?”

Then he’d laughed himself silly for almost ten minutes. 

Back to the cake, Five had no idea what he was doing. His arms were coated in sticky red substance almost like bloodstains and he could feel the powder from the rev velvet cake box under his fingernails. As he worked he stuck a hand in his mouth, using his teeth to pry the powder from his nails. 

Delores told him that he was most likely going to get sick from food poisoning or something else similar. He chuckled again.

“Y’know Delores, every year on m’birthday. Mom’d make me a cake,” he slurred as he mixed more cake with his bare hands, “I’d always get a red velvet.”

He squinted up at the sky, trying to make sense of approximately what time it was, before sighing, “And Luther would get…” He paused, racking his brain for the kind of cake his twin would get, “Lemon.” He decided on, not even knowing if it was right or not. 

A loud scraping sound drew him out of his thoughts as he dragged his fingers through the remaining parts of the batter. Five groaned. 

“Time to put this bad boy in the oven,” He said, clapping his red stained hands together in a very-Klaus-like fashion. Several pieces of red batter fly through the air and land on Delores’ face. She doesn’t look amused. 

His ‘oven’ isn’t really an oven, it’s a small fire  pit that he’d hand made over the course of several days. There’s a pile of Umbrella Academy merchandise near it that he burned every time he was feeling especially vengeful or bitter. The other side of the fire pit was stuffed with newspapers all with the same heading, “It’s A Beautiful Day!” 

He’s starting to hate those words as much as the Academy posters that advertised him as a hero. He wasn’t a hero. He was a coward.

Five shoved an entire poster into the flames with a bitter grin, ignoring the searing pain in his hand. Delores sighed from behind him, reminding him that he couldn’t afford to be injured here. He retorted back that it didn’t matter. She told him that it mattered to her and something in his heart softened. He pulled his hand away, clutching it close to his heart and letting out a small whine of pain.

As the cake slowly began to bake, Five retreated back to his camp, nursing his hand. It’s almost spite that kept him going, spite and the overwhelming urge to simply go home. The hot feeling of tears built in his eyes and he blinked them away, in an attempt to preserve his water. He couldn’t afford to get dehydrated, he couldn’t afford to die here. The tears begin to heat his entire face up and before he knew it, they were dripping down his nose, faster and faster and faster. Curses accompanied them as Five completely broke down, sobbing and waving his injured hand around in the air as if that would somehow make this all better. 

“The cake is done,” Delores told him gently.

Five spun around to look at her, tears sliding down his face and an arm cradled against his chest. He limped over to the fire and the cake, wrapping a thick towel around his good hand to yank the cake out of the flames. 

He doesn’t have frosting, he doesn’t have sprinkles or anything of the sort. Nothing but alcohol and ashes. 

It’s still the best cake he’s ever had.

“Happy Birthday Five,” whispered Delores.


End file.
